Finish a novel 2024 accountability thread

[OctoblocksAssemble]

Hey, I was on one of these a couple of years ago and got the first draft of my novel pinned down in a year. Working on the sequel now so I thought I'd start another one.

So, my project. Book 2 of a trilogy, the first book is 2 drafts in, but I'd like to get 2 and 3 at the rough draft stage before I take the first any further. I want to have a good handle on the whole plot
It's a YA fantasy.

I must say, I joined Jericho Writers and have found it very good. On Fridays we are invited to post snippets of our work based on a topic, and other members provide feedback and an editor selects several to feedback on. This is elevating my work.

I'm working my way through the second draft but it's slow going as my method is to go chapter by chapter, making each chapter highly polished before moving onto the next one. So I'm calling it a second draft but realistically it's numerous drafts of each chapter before I decide it's good enough to add it to the novel and move on to the next. And even at that, there are still things I'm realising about my characters and the story as I go on, so sometimes I'm going back to earlier chapters to work that in. For example, three chapters in I realised that it's raining heavily on the morning of my inciting incident, so I needed to go back and put that in. And I realised that I want the fact that one character really wants a dog to be a slightly bigger part of her personality.

I'm also being really careful about grammar on this one. Generally my grammar is perfectly fine but in a long form work, it's really easy to write sentence fragments or sentences where action/feeling is misattributed, or to forget vocative commas, etc.

Today I'm working on a chapter that I thought had a really polished opening back when I first wrote it. But now, I can see so, so many ways in which it no longer matches the style I've developed. It's missing the subtlety I've learned to write with and a passage that I still think is genuinely good, doesn't belong where it is.

So overall it's a very slow process compared to the gallop of my first draft. And I already know that once this draft is done, I am going to do at least one if not two more drafts. Because I know that there are small sensual details that I will only be ready to layer in once this draft is done.

@EveryKneeShallBow good luck getting started. I decided to take a break and mess about with a couple of other ideas (not serious ones), but ultimately I haven't done much writing at all.
I think part of my problem is the decision to take a break from my favourite character's POV in this one. The plot very much belongs to another character, but he's a bit less fun, or maybe I just have less of a handle on him. I think I'm stuck until some of the life crap subsides and I have a bit more mental energy to give to it.

I’m just about to finish a draft and send it off. It’s been such hard work but I’ve loved it at the same time. Can’t wait to start something new!

Good luck @SmugglersHaunt ! Don’t forget to come back and update us, and maybe get some motivation for your new projects.

Well, I have decided to change how my book is structured, and I am now writing an entirely new first couple of chapters, starting from the protagonist's childhood. Previously it started when she was an adult nearing 40, but the feedback I've received appears to be focused on much backstory being missing or told too much. Therefore I am starting right at the start. I may split it into part 1, part 2 and part 3.